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Friday, August 2, 2013

Neoprene Vest and Camera Harness

I've been trying to come up with a good way to mount my GoPro onto my dogs for ages. I've found an okay way to attach the GoPro to Koira's collar so it dangles under her neck, simply by using a hair tie to attach it. It dangles too low for Pallo to be comfortable wearing it like that. Not ideal, but it works well enough for Koira to take still photos. What it doesn't work for is video. The dangling-from-a-hair-tie method is way too unstable to make anything close to a watchable video.

Just looking cute

I recently decided to make Koira a neoprene vest. She gets chilled when swimming, even on hot days, simply because she refuses to come out of the water. Eventually, she gets so cold that her entire body is violently shaking. I figured a doggie wet suit would be just the thing.

Then I thought, hey, a neoprene vest would make a pretty stable mount for the GoPro too...

There isn't a way to attach the GoPro to the front of this vest, but it works great when mounted on the back. I think it is about as stable as a dog mounted camera can be, really. The vest fits very snugly, without hindering movement. Since the vest is so snug, the GoPro has very little camera shake. Most of the shake comes directly from the dog's movement.

Koira is happy to sit, swim, or do pretty much anything while wearing it

I think I need to reinforce the current velcro closures with some small snaps, since the velcro can come loose if Koira moves suddenly, like jumping off the dock into the water. Overall, it worked really well on our trip to the river, though. The velcro even held well enough as long as I made sure to really rub it together well, and Koira never actually lost the vest even when some of the velcro came loose.

The front velcro closure. I think I will add a snap to it.

So, what do you think? Does your dog need their own wet suit? Or how about just the awesome camera holding ability of it? This first vest taught me a lot about how best to make these, but even so, I am totally thrilled with how this first one turned out. The only down side so far is that it is, of course, too hot for Koira to wear this during the summer other than when playing in the water. So I'll have to wait on getting some first hand flyball footage until the weather cools down.

In the mean time, how about a dog's-eye-view of some dock diving at the river?

Elli needs a wetsuit - she does the same violent shaking thing when we play on hot days. It's really awful to watch... because she still wants to go in the water so bad, haha. Ah, dogs with no blubber to keep them warm, am I right?

Nicely done! If you decide to make more, I'd want one for Karma. Quasar is probably too small to mount a GoPro on.

I've seen tactical harnesses for military/police dogs for sale, and they have a semi-rigid plate that runs down the dog's back, and then the camera mount is on a pole that comes up from the back to bring the camera up over the head. They mount that pole quite a bit further back than you did, to get it away from the movement of the shoulders. Here is one example.

Want to make us one of those? Ha, ha. We got a GoPro and need a way to mount it to Chester and Gretel. I saw a Kurgo Harness for a GoPro at Superzoo and bought one. The metal mounting plates are too big though and dig into the back of their necks and the front one sits right on their pointy chest bones. We need to come up with something else. We would need a breathable mesh one though because neoprene would get too hot hiking.

great ... happy to see one more application of neoprene well DuPont scientists invented Neoprene on April 17, 1930. Neoprene is a synthetic rubber that is produced by polymerization of chloroprene. Neoprene is used for fly fishing waders. it provides excellent insulation against cold. now neoprene has become a favorite material for lifestyle in laptop sleeves and remote controls.Yamaha also using neoprene for musical instrument making.To know moreNeoprene